Month: February 2017

accessing accounts.

There a different departments in our life and some openly talk about it, and others keep certain matters private, and in a world where we feel the need to share everything, I understand the need to lay low. But there is a liability to our actions that should be discussed.

Everyone defines friendship differently and quite frankly that is okay, but what I am not okay with is people enabling me or vice versa. We have financial advisers to help us with our investments, savings, and retirement to hold us ACCOUNTABLE  (or is that just me now because I’m finally adulting.) We hire trainers and/or nutritionists to guide us through the process of getting healthier. We have apps to tell us how much we slept, how many calories we burned, how many steps we’ve taken in a day – I could go on, but you get the point. It all goes back to accountability, we ultimately  want to be responsible for our actions. SO in what sane world would I want a group of friends who indulge me and not push me to grow?

It is simple. Openly addressing what or who created the problems in your life is the first step to fixing “issues.” Of course, there are consequences to ALL actions, but ignoring  the truth YOU created derails all businesses, relationships, and friendships. And that is the biggest quandary people don’t want to confront- themselves.

Face yourself in the mirror. Do not cover it when you have mishandled some accounts in your life. Have people in your life HOLD the mirror when your hands tremble. Don’t coddle me or disguise my shortcomings. You’re setting me up for disaster, not greatness and I want to be great. How can I be productive if I can’t recognize what hurdles are in the foreground? That is the pivotal moment we need friends, family to hold us answerable. I can’t win nor can YOU without accountability.

People who choose to remain indifferent aren’t doing you any favors. I demand accountability. Those who refrain from holding the mirror (for themselves and you) create larger problems. Most people are afraid to have someone look at them critically and dig deeper and evaluate, but how do we progress in our careers, at our jobs? We have evaluations every six months to see where our strengths lie and our weaknesses – to determine what direction our focus needs to be so we can continually improve and not just remain stagnant. Why wouldn’t we apply the same principles to our lives? I refuse to deal or acknowledge people who can’t challenge themselves because in all honestly, how can they contribute to my greatness? They can’t. If they abstain from recognizing their own actions dealing with work, speech, behavior – then there isn’t much they can contribute to your life. Self-inflicting issues can only be ridden with accountability. You can not wallow about the changes happening in you life if you dodge refinement.

Having accountability is most certainly not the end of world, but an opening to a million possibilities. Be accountable. Cultivate in greatness. Make a difference. Stand up for what is right- because those who go left is not the side of the quest I want to be on.

What account have you managed today?

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too cool for school.

Everyone has a different approach on how they show emotions. Some would say exhibiting too much emotion is a sign of weakness, I on the other hand have ALWAYS believed it takes an abundant amount of strength to actually reveal how you’re truly feeling. Masking emotions is not for everyone. I, for one can’t do it ALL. I inherited my father’s fury unibrow, that scrunches and gets low when I don’t understand something. Some people wear their emotions on their sleeves, I happen to wear them on my face. I have to catch myself most days when I’m making the “are you stupid?” face-or what my friends call, “the Fatima face.” I’m 100% sure that is my face 89.9% of the time.

I absolutely despise labels, yet at times I find myself using them for the sake of explaining certain situations. Who doesn’t want to be the cool guy, or the cool girl? They portray themselves as if they have no care in the world. They’re chill and nothing bothers them. Or so it seems.

Let me tell you what I learned about the cool guy and cool girl. Things bother them, they bottle up those emotions and eventually… POP goes the weasel. Communicating is extremely vital in ANY relationship you foster. In order to cultivate and strengthen existing relationships, and new ones, you MUST communicate at ALL times. And I admit talking seems like a chore most days, but without verbal and even non-verbal communication there isn’t much we can accomplish in any category of our life.

In relationships, I’m SO the cool girl. Nothing really bothers me. You don’t call for a couple of days, I’m cool – I’m entirely too busy in my own life to really notice. Plus being clingy is NOT my thing. Time and dedication should be given freely. They hang out with other friends – who are girls, I’m cool. What’s a relationship without trust anyways?

And I don’t even think I intentionally try to be the “cool girl.” I was cool with it all. Not because, I didn’t feel the need to communicate buried emotions, because relationships are so tricky. People give different, love different,  and most importantly they communicate different. Just because he didn’t text me every second of the day didn’t mean he didn’t care. Just because my mother is more abrasive than other mothers, doesn’t mean she doesn’t love me the same. My father is a man of very little words, but his actions leave an impact on me daily. So I’ve learned over the years, not to ask for much. I never intended to be the “cool girl.” My disposition always remains the same. So I continued to be patient, because I’d want the same in return.

But by labeling myself I did myself a disservice. Why can’t we be a little bit of everything? Matters don’t have to be so black and white. We attempt to fit ourselves into a box, when we want to. And others do the same  when we act in a negative way, i.e if we do something “crazy” are we crazy? No.

I felt myself closing in, the wall I had built to protect myself was starting to cave in on me.

We often mimic the love we receive. He was so extremely chill, that I let my inner cool girl shine as well. I don’t think I was necessarily accommodating him as much as I was accommodating my own feelings. I could obviously never refrain from being passionate as he would say, so it wasn’t like I was changing or molding myself FOR HIM, but there was an element to my actions that tried to be collected at all times, to be in control of them. I guess it was never about him.

We build facades with the intent that when a person doesn’t give us what we want, we tell ourselves, “that’s alright, because I prepared myself for this” and if they do, then we hoped for it.(I wanted to be the strong girl.) But that’s the thing about building facades.. no one wins. My friend Candice literally ALWAYS tells me what she wants – a phone call from me, and because she matters to me, I give her that. That is how ALL relationships works. We actively make a choice EVERYDAY to nurture relationships we want. But remember, you can NOT ask for things you, yourself have difficulty providing.

Whether we keep our emotions bottled up or we scream the things we want, we’re not really treading properly. He never spoke up about what he wanted, and neither did I (for awhile) and we both lost.. and the kicker is – none of us were playing the game.

I wanted words of affirmation, and he wanted.. actually I’m still not sure what he wanted, but its a learning process right? I also recognize no matter how much I wanted words from him, until he was ready to give them, I would never get the conversation I so deeply longed for. So I walked away knowing for the first time, I didn’t have to be the cool girl.. or any girl for that matter. I could just be me, and I am composed of many elements. Collected, cool, crazy, but above all – loving.

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a minimalist perspective.

I scroll and scroll some more. Then I head to another outlet, tap on the picture and patiently wait for it to load and watch the story unfold. I realized an hour had passed keeping up with my peers. It dawned on me how I do indeed enjoy story time but perhpas more meaningful ones…

Is there an obsession with knowing what everyone else is doing? I’m a millennial and I see how our generation and Gen Z feels the need to be connected to everyone and everything, every second of the day. The digital natives have changed the game, they have upped the usage by 75%.  Have we lost all human connection? I know my eyes are tired from all the rolling they do as I scroll my Facebook feed.

I had been obsessed with living a minimalistic life for years, and I always thought how can I really do this? I own entirely too much for starters, but I wanted to declutter my life in every single aspect. To clothes, to jewelry, to people.

Yeah sure, I recognize people aren’t disposable per se, but in a way they are. The moment I turned 29, its as if I had a radar. The second someone was fake to me, my mind would start to beep. It always beeped, but the beeping got louder and louder.

I edit multiple times before I send emails, upload blogs,  and even my journal writings have tons of edits, scratch marks and all. So why would my life be any different? Be a ruthless editor of what you allow in your life, in your home and most importantly in your mind. What does this object mean to me? What does this person mean to me? Why do I continue to give someone space in my LIFE, when given the right time period, this person would give me nothing substantial (too specific?)

So I edited, deleted and kept going.

I guess that’s just it, I’ve never needed a great deal from people. Genuine friendship, appreciation, respect. But the more time passes, I acknowledge how difficult it is for people to give these elements that come so naturally to me. Its harder for me to be fake. It has absolutely drained me. The concept of keeping up with people became a job, people I didn’t even care for, but we continue to follow them on different mediums because we don’t want to offend anyone. I can’t uphold this persona. I can’t remain robotic of scrolling and eye rolling. Why deny myself the simple pleasure of being peaceful ON MY OWN DEVICES?

I’ve still been “documenting” moments in my life that make me feel a variety of emotions, but in a more old school manner. I pull out my journal and jot down how I am feeling in that instance. Whether I am thrilled, bitter, or somber. I follow with why I’m feeling this way and what can I do to change it or channel my energy differently.

No matter how we spin it. We want validation. We want someone to tell us we’re pretty or give us a pat on the back when we accomplish something of an importance. We want the world to validate our emotions. We want someone to approve the things we find joy in, but I don’t want that through an Instagram filter.I want it to be in a genuine more concrete way.

I don’t share too much of my personal life. My mind is forever on overdrive for my family, friends, the things I love and even despise. Daily, I fight small battles and enjoy victories I never share. Some days I even cry in my defeats, wipe my tears and head to work and tackle my day. There is an ENTIRE world you never see behind that Starbucks cup on Snapchat.

There have been numerous benefits of deleting people, social media, and decluttering my life thoroughly. I got rid of every little substance that didn’t give me joy. I detached myself from materialistic possessions. I cleared out bags and bags of random items from my bedroom. I wanted to feel free. Then I went through my social media and deleted EVERYONE who basically voted for Trump – this kind of petty I enjoyed indulging in briefly. It is nauseating enough to see Bills being passed that effect me directly and then to see those who openly agree to it all is something I could live completely without. Then I deleted social media entirely. I can read the news without people’s unsolicited opinions.

Also, because I wanted to be more productive with my time. In 31 days (do you see a trend?) I found time to read more, write more, declutter and really live that minimal life I wanted. I became self aware of my emotions without all the fake noise that surrounded me. I saved money easily by taking myself out of the mix of seeing what others had. I don’t feel the need to share my thoughts, my memories with others. I get to keep them to myself, something we don’t do enough of.

I also can admit this was kind of a drastic change in lifestyle and perhaps I need to find a balance, to disconnect and still feel connected. But by staying connected to others you can lose some connection with yourself. Valuable time you will never get back. We are taught that being able to multi-task is praise worthy. How can the age of distraction and half assing everything bring value to our life? I finally have self-control and discipline in various aspects of my life. Of course, we have the ability to do so but do we apply ourselves enough?

I want assets in my name, to build an empire, to be successful. And sure, you can do so while having thousands of fake followers watching your every move, but I rather not. Evil eye is very much a thing, and I’ve never believed it before as much as I do now, that being “envious” can strip you from all happiness. And it can be as simple as a momentary question. If you find yourself being jealous and asking, “I wish I had those shoes.” or “I wish I had that job.” Then ask yourself what are YOU doing different to actually obtain those things?

By eliminating, to put eloquently, the bullshit, I have made allowances for actual change. I’m not scrolling through a feed and saying, “man I wish I was traveling, or I wish I was in grad school.” I made it all happen in just a month by ridding myself of excessive commotion.

I starved my distractions to feed my focus. If you want your life to flourish and shift in the right direction, then you must do something completely different.  You must reconstruct your life to fit the vision you have set for yourself. And you don’t need your 1000 friends on Facebook to give you accolades when you get a promotion or get that Instagran like for your #OOTD to validate the fact your outfit is dope. Share those stories with TRUE friends who aren’t jealous of your successes or deep down want you to fail. In the words of Drizzy, we have fake people showing fake love to us… and we continue to accommodate them? We can deny all we want, that we don’t post for people, but it goes back to the question I ask myself often now, “if the world were blind, would I still do this?” A small part of us does want to impress others, and the other half of us indulges in worldly affairs solely for ourselves and to share with those that actually matter. So ask yourself, which part are you feeding?

I deprived my “followers” and found out quickly who truly cared for what I was feeling or thinking. And who cared enough to text me about the Muslim Ban. Who really stood in solidarity with me, not just behind a lousy like.

By feeding my focus I became the most productive and peaceful I have been in a very long time. Insert 300 likes here.

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